


Bloodlust

by andifiquitnow



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-24
Updated: 2013-10-24
Packaged: 2017-12-30 08:09:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1016192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andifiquitnow/pseuds/andifiquitnow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Magnus was getting stuck in a lot of caves this decade and Nikola seemed to be to blame a lot of the time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bloodlust

**Author's Note:**

> For Dailna. Congratulations, friend! Have a Teslen fic. Sorry it’s, um, two years late. Set after Awakening, but not right after.

Helen Magnus was generally an adventurous person. She also had a great deal of faith that things would work out, which is a quality she needed a lot of working at the Sanctuary. She was currently questioning that faith, however, because as of late she seemed to be getting stuck in a lot of caves.

Up ahead, Nikola Tesla heaved a dramatic sigh. Getting lost underground was not his idea of a good time either. Colombia had been a big disaster, and the tomb of Alfina hadn’t gone so well either, except for the part where Helen re-vamped him.

Besides which, when there were no abnormals attacking, being stuck places was incredibly tedious. Nikola didn’t like having to think about things like food and water. He thought they should just appear so that he could get on with the business of being a genius. He found it seriously annoying to have to deal with the fact that they’d run out of food yesterday. An annoyance which was slightly alleviated by the fact that it was just him and Helen, no groupies. He’d been passing the time by making frequent quips on the subject.

Nikola gave another pointed sigh and turned around because it was apparent Magnus was not following. She had pulled out their map again, their totally useless map. The person who made it was going to suffer something painful, Nikola decided. He would see to it personally. The map was missing all kinds of information and had already proved worthless, but Helen had it out in front of her anyway like something new might have appeared since the last time she’d checked.

“What are you hoping to see,” Tesla said. “We’ve been all over and through that stupid piece of paper. It obviously can’t help us. We’re too far off the charted path.”

“I just can’t believe it’s totally useless,” she said. “There must be something here, a marker or a guide post we’re missing that will lead us back to the main trail. This is ridiculous!” The last sentence was said in a snap, the tone of voice she used when she couldn’t keep her frustration down any longer or when she was reaching her limits and didn’t want anyone to know it. Tesla suspected it was a little bit of both, but mostly the latter. He wished they had something to eat.

“Lord, I’m hungry,” she said, echoing his thoughts. “When did we finish the emergency rations?”

“Oh, about 24 hours ago, I’d say,” Tesla said.

They’d been stuck in the caves for three days. Day one had gone according to plan, until the explosion had trapped them in. Nikola's fault, as Helen kept reminding him.

Day two, to their frustration, they’d wandered around in difficult circles, while the map proved useless and they finished all the food.

It was now day three and they were almost out of water, patience with each other, and options.

_Five days ago_

“Oh, come on, Helen,” Nikola said. “It’ll be fun!”

Magnus tilted her head and looked at him with fake enthusiasm. “Fun like Colombia was fun? Like Alfina’s cave were fun?”

“Okay, yes, those events didn’t go quite as planned, but this will be totally different.” Tesla flashed her a winning smile, moved a step closer, and lowered his voice. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

Magnus rolled her eyes. She wasn’t actually as reluctant as she was pretending to be. If she was being honest, it did look like fun. She just didn’t want to give Nikola the satisfaction of an easy yes. She wasn’t fooling him, though.

“I can tell, you know,” he said, “that you want to go. So drop the act and start packing.”

Nikola had turned up on her doorstep earlier that morning demanding wine and electrical supplies. He’d made it down to her lab and was half-way through examining something the size and shape of a shoebox by the time she even knew he was there. Henry had let him in and forgotten to tell her in his delight with Tesla’s new toy. She was going to have to have a word with him about door-opening protocol, even if Tesla was currently on the welcome list.

Nikola hadn’t even said hello before launching into the story of his discovery: the Re-Animation Box. He’d tracked it down in a small museum where it had been all but forgotten and those who remembered it was there had no clue as to its purpose.

“Fascinating,” Magnus said. “I thought this box was myth, or at the very least that it was so lost that no one would ever find it.”

“Well, they forgot they were dealing with me,” Nikola said. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” And it was. It was made of stone and covered entirely with designs of some kind that may have been writing or simply decorative, Magnus couldn’t tell.

“The stories say this box can revive the dead,” Nikola said. He sounded almost gleeful until he caught her eye. “Of course, my interests here are strictly altruistic. It’s said that if the box can revive someone and leave them as they were before, it will. If it can’t do it without bringing back the person as less than they were, it won’t. I think it has something to do with how much time has elapsed; we’ll have to do some experiments. But it’s brilliant. It could save lives.”

“Of course, you wouldn’t be planning on using this to make vampires, would you?” Helen said, raising an eyebrow.

“To be honest,” Nikola said, “I’ve decided to take a break from re-birthing the vampire race for a while. I still have the emotional scars from the whole Alfina incident. You may not believe me, Helen, but I’m genuinely interested in the box for itself.”

She didn’t quite believe him, experience didn’t let her, but the opportunity sounded too good to pass up. “The stories say the Box is powered by sand crystals.”

“Correct! This is our chance to experience the wonder of sand crystals as an energy source. It’s genius. Have you even been to French Polynesia?”

They left the next morning, sans Sanctuary employees. Will was away at one of those psychology conferences he used to talk about all the time and Kate was prepping for a sensitive new intake.

Magnus wasn’t sure she would have wanted to bring them anyway, given that this wasn’t strictly Sanctuary business. Henry had begged to go but she turned him down because she didn’t want to have her entire team with her on the other side of the world for no particular reason in case something happened at home.

It didn’t take three people to look for sand crystals and they weren’t expecting to deal with abnormals. Nikola, for one, was delighted.      

\---

The sand crystals supposedly required to power the Re-Animation Box ended up being a lot harder to find then they’d anticipated. Initially, Magnus was having fun but a couple of days into the trip she was starting to wish she’d brought along Will or someone to speed things up.

They’d been camping outside the caves (separate tents) and making forays into them during the day. According to Tesla’s research, the sand crystals should be in or near deep pools of water. It was the minerals in those particular waters and the press of eons that created the energy-filled rocks. Unfortunately, it took them until the end of the second day to even find an underground spring by which time their enthusiasm was rather deflated.

“Ah ha!” Nikola’s voice rang out from around the corner in front of her.

“What is it? Please tell me you’ve found something.”

“Found something I have, my dear Helen,” he said. “Je te présente,” he paused for dramatic effect, “an underground lake!”

“It’s about time,” she said. “I was starting to wonder if you’d made this all up.”

“Really, Helen. Would I mislead you? Don’t answer that.” He grinned at her.

Magnus rolled her eyes and joined him at the edge of the deep, dark water. It was about twenty feet in diameter, hemmed in on all sides by rock walls except for where they were standing.

“Alright, this was step one. Do you actually see any sand crystals?”

Nikola dropped his pack on the ground and shined his flashlight into the water. “There,” he said, pointing. “And there.”

“You’re right,” she said. Pressed into the wall slightly below the surface were three or four clear crystalline rocks. “I see them too. And it looks as if we can retrieve them without diving, all’s the better. I’d rather not have to go back for the diving gear at this point.” They didn’t have the diving gear with them in the first place because it was heavy and awkward and they weren’t sure they were going to need it.

“Agreed,” he said. “Should we toss for it?”

“Oh, no,” Magnus said. “There’s no question. You’re going in.”

“Helen!” Nikola protested.

“You should be able to reach them if you lean over the edge. You can use your vampire strength to get them out of the wall. You’re immortal so you can’t drown and there is no way I’m taking off my shirt like you’re going to have to.”

Nikola huffed. “Fine. But you owe me.” He peeled off his jacket followed by his shirt, casting a suggestive look her way. “I’ll bet you’ve thought about this, though. Ordering me to get naked.”

“Stop stalling.”

With a groan, Nikola flattened himself on the ground beside the pool and prepared to dunk his upper body. “It’s just so dirty.” But he submerged his head and reached out for the crystals.

As it turned out, reaching the crystals was not a problem. Dislodging them was.

Nikola yanked himself out of the pool for at least the sixth time and rolled over onto his back, whipping his hair away from his face with a snap of frustration. “This is so the last time I try to do something for the common good. I need a tool of some kind.”

Magnus surveyed their packs. “We have climbing gear or explosives.”

“Yes, good, excellent. I’ll take the explosives.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea. We don’t know what kind of damage an explosion, even a controlled one, could do to the caves.”

“Yes, and if we have to leave here without the crystals, I will be seriously annoyed.”

Magnus wavered. “We do need them if we want the Box to work.”

“Precisely. Now hand it over.”

Magnus fished the small explosive out of her pack and handed it to him with the detonator. It was supposed to be for emergency purposes only, to dislodge a cave-in should they happen to get stuck, or to extricate them from other unseen circumstances.

In this case, it was about to have the opposite effect.

Nikola set the charge not in the water, but at the waterline in order to loosen the cohesion of the wall in which the crystals were embedded; he didn’t want to inadvertently damage their prize.

“Okay,” he said.

“Okay,” she responded.

“Three, two, one, charge.” Nikola stood back six feet and pressed the detonator. What followed was not what they had planned.

That is to say, there was a massive explosion.

“Get down!” Magnus shouted, diving for him. She knocked him down and crouched over him as the walls shook around them, chunks of rock falling into the water and splashing everywhere as they landed, pebbles, dust, and small rocks bouncing off Magnus. It lasted about ten seconds, which felt like an eternity.

There was a stunned silence.

“Well, shit,” Nikola said.

Magnus sat back and unwrapped her arms from around his head and shoulders. Nikola lay there, looking up at her.

“If you say ‘I told you so,’” he started.

“I told you so,” she interrupted. She couldn’t resist. “What did I say? What did I say not two minutes ago about explosions and danger and unpredictable elements?” She relented. “Are you all right? Did you get hit?”

Nikola shook his head. “No. What about you?”

“Not seriously. I was hit a few times but not badly.”

“Let me see.”

“No, it’s fine.”

“Let me see.”

“It’s fine!”

Nikola raised an eyebrow.

Magnus turned around to satisfy him and he sat up and poked her back gently in several places.

“Looks okay to me. Your jacket wasn’t damaged anyway. Tell me if something starts to feel not right.”

She nodded. “Do you see any of the supplies around here?”

They looked around and two things became immediately obvious. One, they wouldn’t be going out the way they came in, and two, a section of the wall had dropped into the lake revealing a previously unseen passageway leading in an unknown direction. It was the only exit.

Magnus stood and retrieved Nikola’s dusty, damp shirt and jacket from the ground. “Here. That’s a start anyway.”

Nikola held the clothing away from him with one finger and looked at it with distaste. He wisely didn’t say anything.

“Other than that,” Magnus said, “it looks like we just have your pack. I don’t see mine. That means we have a day’s supply of emergency rations, a basic med kit, limited climbing supplies, the map, and that’s about it.” She pointed at the open passage. “I suggest we get started before we find out if your ‘little explosion’ did enough damage to the cave structure to bring down any more walls.” She fixed him with a look. “And we’re going to have to leave the crystals behind.”

“Helen!”

“I’m sorry! But do you see any crystals around here? I don’t like it any more than you do.”

Unfortunately, Nikola had to admit that he did not, in fact, see any crystals. The explosion had knocked a lot of rock into the water, including the section of the wall to which the crystals had been affixed.

“Fine,” he muttered. He gingerly put on his shirt and jacket, trying not to touch them as much as possible. To make matters worse, his upper body had been wet when Magnus shoved him into the ground and the dirt had stuck to him accordingly.

What he wouldn’t give for a bath right about now. Preferably, a bath for two. All of his flirting with Magnus was basically just a show, in that he was doing it to deflect attention away from the fact that he really did care for her. He knew she didn’t want to hear it from him yet, but as immortals, he was content to wait a little while longer. Not much longer, but a little. He was pretty sure she enjoyed the flirting even if she stamped it out most of the time. But yes. A bath for two, no interruptions, no dirt, just a big old-fashioned claw-foot tub, or one of the new models like in a hotel, with jets and seats. Yes, that would be good. Some bath salts, a loofah...

He came back to reality with Magnus snapping her fingers in front of his face. He resisted biting them -- with his human teeth, not vampire -- but barely.

“Hello, Nikola?” She said. “Are you with us?”

“Yes. Sorry,” he said. “I’m ready.” He looked at the passage. “Ladies first.”

She slung his pack over her shoulder and squeezed through the opening.    

\---

Helen’s backpack hit the wall as she manoeuvred through the small opening, causing it to jar the sore places where she had been hit by falling rocks. _Nikola Tesla,_ she though. _Always an adventure_. Despite the explosion and the fact that this trip had turned into a total waste of time, she was still sort of having a good time. She loved an adventure, loved the rush of adrenaline. And since this trip didn’t involve abnormals or the Sanctuary in a specific way, it was essentially her version of a vacation.

Nikola, for all his complaining about dirt, was actually a good adventure companion. He made intelligent conversation, had good reflexes, and his being immortal certainly helped. Helen realized that she wouldn’t mind seeing more of him around the Sanctuary. Maybe she could get him to stay for a while after this was over.

Truthfully, she had been missing him recently. Missing someone who knew her so well. She had others who knew her, but it wasn’t the same. She had raised Henry as her child, Kate was her friend and employee, and Will, well, Will she knew and trusted deeply, but he wasn’t her partner yet, and the Big Guy knew more than any of them what her life was like on the outside but he didn’t know what it was like on the inside.

None of them was her equal. Nikola Tesla was very much her equal. They had so much history that they just understood each other, even when they were fighting. She missed having that kind of connection with someone.

And Helen Magnus was honest enough to know that that might not be the only reason she was missing Nikola. The way he looked at her sometimes made her bones shiver with anticipation. Maybe she was missing that, too.

\---

The food was gone and the water was gone. Nikola looked awful. He was affected even more than Magnus; being immortal didn’t make him immune to the needs of the human body, it just meant he wouldn’t die. Not dying wasn’t the same as being strong enough to move under his own volition while trying to locate the exit in an endless maze of tunnels. They hadn’t been prepared for things to go so badly awry. Even after the explosion, they hadn’t thought they would be in any actual danger and now they were.

Helen knew there was a way for at least one of them to gain some strength back. The first time she suggested it, Nikola shut her down flatly and refused to talk about it. The second time she suggested it was when Nikola lost his grip on the wall and collapsed to the ground.

Helen dropped to her knees in front of him and she didn’t even have to say anything before he started refusing. Because what he needed was blood; to drink blood. As a half-vampire he didn’t need it every day, but he did need it and he needed it now. He knew this; his refusal came from the fact that there was no Magnus-concocted plasma compound available. There was only Magnus.

“Helen, I won’t. It’s too dangerous! I won’t feed off you like a monster who can’t control its urges.”

Helen was firm. “I’ll tell you when to stop. You have to trust me.” She gripped his shoulders.

Nikola’s eyes looked dark in his pale face. “I trust you, Helen, but this is different. And who knows what impact drinking your altered blood will have on me. We can’t risk it.”

“This _isn’t_ different. And it will have no impact, I suspect. You’re already immortal so my longevity won’t affect you and your abnormal DNA has already been unlocked so the source blood can’t do any harm. Stop using that as an excuse. You need this to be functional and I need you to help me get out of here. It’s the only way and you know it.” Magnus unzipped her leather jacket, Nikola’s eyes following. She took the jacket off and rolled up the left sleeve of her long-sleeved, black shirt. She gestured at a place on the underside of her forearm. “Here.”

Nikola reluctantly took the wrist Magnus was offering. He bent over it and kissed the spot gently with an open mouth. He felt her inhale. He didn’t move.

“Do it,” she said.

He did. Nikola called to the vampire part within him and with a hiss his eyes turned black and his teeth and nails grew deadly. In the high of the change he sank his teeth into her skin.

Helen choked back a cry of pain. She had intended to stay silent but she couldn’t help it. It seemed to encourage him. He drank her blood with an enthusiasm that would have scared her, if she scared easily.

A minute passed with her eyes open, watching the blood run down her skin and looking at the dust in Nikola’s hair. It was an odd sensation. It only hurt when he reapplied his teeth, which did hurt quite a bit, but other than that it didn’t feel much different than when he had kissed her there.

She realised there must be some sort of topical numbing agent in his saliva and she resolved to do some tests on it when they got out of this. How had they not known that? Probably because he never fed on anything that was in a position to tell him. It could be useful. She was starting to feel a bit faint. Enough.

“Enough, Nikola,” she said. He ignored her. “Nikola! Stop,” she said. No change. She gripped the back of his head with her free hand and pulled fiercely on his hair. “Nikola! You’re hurting me!”

She exerted enough force that he yanked his head back. He looked at her with open desire and bloodlust, wrapping his long-nailed hands firmly around her arm to stop the bleeding. He looked incredibly dangerous, like a purebred vampire, not the half-breed he was. He tilted his head back and hissed violently before leaning in, smelling her warm t-shirt and her hair and leaving a bloody kiss on her ear.

Magnus knew she had to stop this. “Nikola, focus on me. Focus. Look at me.” She gripped his chin to force eye contact and held it. His enlarged black eyes looked into her blue ones and for a long moment she didn’t recognize him, but she moved her thumb over his jaw and he gave a whole body shudder and through what looked like the sheer force of will changed back into human.

The tension left his body and he dropped his forehead to her shoulder and left it there. “Oh, Helen,” he breathed. He was shivering, she couldn’t tell from what. Both his hands were still wrapped around her arm and she rested her other hand on the back of his head. They leaned against each other for a long moment, their breathing the only sound.

Finally Nikola pulled back. “How do you feel,” Magnus asked him.

“How do I feel, Helen. I feel much better. How do you feel?” His tone was better, as was his colour.

She nodded. “I’m all right. Just a little light-headed.”

“I didn’t hurt you?”

“No permanent damage, I shouldn’t think.” She managed a smile. “I just need a bandage for my arm and I’ll be ready to keep looking for the bloody exit. Sound good?”

“God, yes,” Nikola said, although he didn’t really believe her about being ready to go. “Do we have any bandages?”

“In the bag,” she replied. “Over there.”

He took his bloodied hands off her arm. It had ceased to bleed freely, but it looked awful, the skin ripped with multiple puncture marks. Nikola watched without saying anything as Helen cleaned it, wincing, and then he bandaged it.

She might not be badly hurt physically but she knew they were going to have to talk about this later, even though Nikola was looking like he never wanted to talk about it again. She didn’t think he had ever drunk human blood before.

“All set,” he said, fingertips on the bandage. “I hope it doesn’t scar.”

“Shouldn’t,” she replied, with more conviction than she felt. “My longevity seems to be intent on keeping my body the way it is. I rarely scar.”

Nikola nodded and stood, offering his hand. Magnus waved it away but had to grit her teeth and take it when she stumbled.

“Helen,” he started.

“Leave it for later,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”

\---

They did not, in fact, make it out right away, which was unfortunate. Magnus wasn’t feeling well and their progress was slow because of it, not that either of them mentioned it. At least with Nikola returned to almost full strength one of them was thinking clearly and progress was better than before, though most of the time their path was not that even in name.

Several more hours of searching and tiny passageways and dead-ends and they stumbled on to an exit, almost entirely by chance. Even Helen Magnus got lucky sometimes; it wasn’t always control and planning, as much as she liked to give off that impression.

They could see tiny pinpricks of stars in the sky high above. Had they been in top shape it would have been a doable climb, there were plenty of footholds, but at this point even looking at it was overwhelming to Magnus. And anyway, the sensation of having found the exit was so strong that it was almost as good as actually getting out.

Nikola bounced up and down. “Yes! Praise the Lord, this is almost over. All I want is three bottles of wine and somewhere soft to sit. And, of course, a bath. Who needs to be rescued when you can do it for yourself.”

Helen smiled and leaned against the rock wall. “I am also thrilled to have found the way out Nikola, but I’m afraid we won’t be leaving immediately.”

Nikola turned to her with a look of concern that to his credit seemed to be mostly for her and not for his delayed escape.

“I’m going to have to rest before attempting the climb and it’s probably not wise to do it in the near dark anyway,” she said. “Can we wait until the sun comes up?”

Nikola nodded as she sat on the floor with a near silent sigh of relief.

He stood there looking at her for a minute. “Do you want to sleep? It would do you some good.”

She nodded. “I know.” She eased herself down onto her side, tucking her uninjured arm under her head. The ground was hard though, and she always had trouble sleeping without a blanket, even in the middle of summer. There was something essential about the element of a blanket to sleeping.

Nikola sat down beside her and they watched each other for a little while. Sleep didn’t seem particularly near, though she knew she needed it.

Finally, Nikola said, “Can I...do you want me to...” He trailed off, not sure how to phrase the suggestion in a way that Helen wouldn’t reject it. He didn’t want to her to reject it.

“Yes, Nikola,” she said, too tired to be amused at his efforts to make the question sound the least suggestive as possible. Though Nikola Tesla was nothing if not a gentleman. “You can come sleep with me.”

He winked at her and stepped over to her other side, sliding in behind her. She adjusted her body to meet as much of his as possible, from knees to thighs to shoulders. After a moment’s hesitation at the intimacy of it, he wrapped his arm around her and tucked his hand between her waist and the ground. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but they were settled.

Nikola could see the stars and smell Helen’s particular scent, and as much as he was dirty and hungry and never wanted to see a cave ever again, he smiled. He knew she wasn’t doing well, but they’d found the way out and there was nothing they couldn’t handle from here. The hard part was over. So this was pretty good, really. Camping, Magnus-style. Sure to involve life-threatening peril and danger, but fun none-the-less. And maybe with a few moments that made the whole thing worth it.

Helen didn’t say anything else and neither did Nikola. He ran his fingers lightly over her stomach through the open zipper of her jacket. She relaxed into him, distracting herself from the hardness of the ground and the aching of her body. She took a deep breath, held it, and released it. She closed her eyes. They eventually slept.

\---

When Magnus finally pulled herself out of the opening at the top, she rolled away just enough to leave space for Nikola to climb out and lay there trying to slow her pulse.

Nikola flopped down beside her in a most un-vampire like way. “Well,” he said. “Let’s not do that again.”

“Agreed,” Magnus said.

Nikola rolled up on his elbow beside her and in the same motion leaned in and kissed her on the cheek, just shy of her mouth.

Her eyebrows went up as he pulled back to look at her. He waited.

In his hesitation, Magnus put one hand on the back of his neck and pulled him to her, kissing him full on the mouth. They relaxed into each other. Take away the barriers and the egos and they were more well-matched than either of them would admit.

Nikola was using both hands to hold himself over her, but he took one away and slid his fingers into her disheveled ponytail, massaging the scalp behind one ear. He moved his hand to her chest, fingers spread wide on her sternum. Magnus found it soothing.

She shifted toward him and he responded by sliding one leg between hers and lowering himself to let her body take his weight. It felt good even as it intensified the pressure of the ground below her.

She knew, sort of, that this shouldn’t be happening but she didn’t particularly care at the moment. She’d just been stuck in a cave, she was hungry and thirsty, she’d had a half-vampire drink the blood from her arm, and she had most recently climbed out of said cave with said injured arm. They were in the jungle of Tahiti on the side of the mountain and everything was lush and beautiful and it was sort of perfect in a weird way that this was the first time she was kissing Nikola Tesla.

There had been a new unsureness after she’d allowed him to feed off her, demanded it really, as if they weren’t sure how to relate to each other anymore. Helen knew it would pass, after over 100 years she wasn’t about to lose Nikola as a friend, but things were definitely different. Maybe that’s why she was doing this now. It was like they had reached a new level of intimacy and it now other kinds of intimacy were following along in a natural procession.

The kiss was getting heated. Nikola began moving his hands over her body with more purpose and Helen arched into him slightly. He increased the pressure of his leg between hers.

She responded by sliding her hands under his shirt to press her fingers into his back. At which point she started laughing into his mouth.

Nikola pulled back. “Seriously. What. Helen. Is funny right now.”

“I’m sorry Nikola,” she said with a smile. “It’s just that when I entertained the notion of what this might be like, you were never so dirty.”

Nikola looked appalled and then let it go. He sighed dramatically. “Yes, fine, if you must, draw attention to my current condition.” He would have gesticulated but he needed his hands for support. He laughed.

“Come here,” she said wrapping her limbs around him. She pulled him back down and he laid his head on her shoulder. They stayed like that for a while, his body rising and falling with her breath.

Helen closed her eyes. She was light-headed with hunger and thirst and on top of that, she’d been kissing Nikola Tesla. She snuggled him closer and focussed on keeping a grip on consciousness. _I will not pass out, I will not pass out,_ she thought. If nothing else, it would give Nikola a lifetime of teasing that she’d fainted from his kiss, and she wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction.

“I need food and water,” Helen said eventually, as her body’s demands overruled the comfortable sensation of Nikola's weight on her.

Nikola pulled back immediately. “Yes, I’m sorry. Come on, let’s go.” He helped her to her feet where she insisted on walking unaided. They took a moment to get their bearings, using the side of the mountain as a guide.

They didn’t end up being too far from their camp, though it was a struggle fighting through the leafy jungle to arrive. Arrive they did, and Helen sat down in her tent with relief and motioned for Nikola to hand her the radio. Even though they’d been gone for three days, it was a poorly-travelled section of island. There had been no visitors to steal their belongings. A mixed blessing, as there had been no one to wonder where they were and if they might need help.

Helen radioed for help and ate and drank slowly. Nikola packed up their gear and the helicopter arrived within the hour.

\---

Magnus was sitting at her desk doing paperwork. It had been several days since they’d returned from the island. Between recovering and explanations and everyone hovering around, she hadn’t had the chance to talk to Nikola.

He was still at the Sanctuary, making himself scarce, spending all his time in the library or Henry’s lab. Not in her office, though, and not in her lab. Helen suspected he felt guilty for all kinds of things and she also suspected he wasn’t comfortable with that particular emotion and probably didn’t know what to do about it.

She was right. Nikola felt guilty for suggesting they go to the caves, for bringing the Re-Animation Box to the Sanctuary in the first place, and for feeding from her. Helen had been right about that, too. He had never before drunk human blood and he felt guilty for breaking his oath and guilty for how much he’d enjoyed it. He would do it again in an instant and he needed to make sure that wasn’t going to happen before he rejoined the world. The only thing he didn’t feel guilty about was kissing Helen. He felt excellent about that.

All of which is why Helen eventually had to go find him instead of the other way around. She looked up from her paperwork finally and decided that now was the time, Nikola’s less-than-subtle avoidance tactics be damned.

She found him in the library.

“There you are,” she said.

“Hmm,” he said, barely looked up from the book he was studying at the desk.

Helen sighed. “Nikola, we’re going to have to talk about this. You can’t avoid me forever.”

“Actually, my dear,” he said, “as two immortals we can do exactly that: ignore each other forever.”

Helen gave him an encouraging smile. “Yes, well, maybe we can, but we shouldn’t. Talk to me. Why are you hiding in my Sanctuary? If you wanted solitude, why didn’t you leave? Not that I’m asking you to,” she amended hastily. “But there are better places to avoid me than my own library.”

Nikola looked up at her, considering his answers. He went with the truth. “Because I want to make sure I’m safe to be among humans. I want to make sure I have control.”

Helen recognized the honesty in that. “You’re welcome to stay as long as you need. You know that.”

“Do I?” He said. “I wasn’t sure if I was still wanted. I broke an oath, Helen. One I made to you, as I recall.”

“And you broke it because I asked you to. There’s no fault here, Nikola. You did what was necessary. Besides, I’m starting to get used to having you here.”

He rolled his eyes. “If you’re not used to me after 100 years, I don’t know what it’ll take.”

“Well, for 60 of those years I thought you were dead.”

“Vampire, remember?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, with more meaning than she intended. Nikola’s lightened demeanour changed. “I didn’t mean that,” Magnus said.

“You did,” he said. “It’s alright, though. I remember too.”

She nodded. “Well, I’ll leave you be. But come talk to me, will you? I’d like it.”

She pushed back from where she had been leaning on the desk. Before she could move away though, Nikola grabbed her wrist to stop her and when she did, took her hand, interlacing their fingers with deliberation.

“Thank you,” he said.

“For what?” she said.

“For lots of things.”

He gripped her fingers. He wanted to pull her towards him, to stand up and kiss her, to take her to bed, to kiss the scar that had formed on her arm, and to make it go away. But in familiar surroundings those unfamiliar actions felt like they wouldn’t be accepted. In a jungle on the other side of the world, maybe, but even though they were the same people here as they were last week in Tahiti, he sensed she would refuse him now, as she might not have then.

So he released her hand. For the time being.

Helen felt relief at Nikola’s release of her hand. She didn’t want to have to turn him down.

Because her answer actually wasn’t no, it was yes. If asked outright, she would answer yes and yet she knew she wasn’t ready. So she just had to hope he wouldn’t ask. Not today, anyway. But she would give him the opportunity again soon, and next time she would answer. 


End file.
